RAMBUTAN LITERARY: ISSUE ONE

NOT YET MY COUNTRY

BOBBY SUN

i. malaysiakl, ’69. my father learnshe is a troublemaker;he is ten years oldwith a gun to his headand a soldier in his house.they tell him stay out.he stays on and ten years laterhe is the token, the only chinesepaid by the state that year to graduate,among the thirty-odd percentof places they have in the day.he leaves; we still visit.there is a concrete-ringed house in johorwe rent out for eight hundred a month.there is family, sownup and down the peninsulastill, we must remember;this will not always be ours.this is not yet my country.

ii. singaporejurong, ’97. my mother liftsher hands from my eyes;I smell paint and leather.we pay twice as muchfor one-quarter the house,but it doesn’t need a fence;father tells me up norththere was trouble in ’69,there is trouble now,there will be trouble but wewill make it here.in school, ’09. my friends and Iget a card. everyone’sis pink but mineis blue and says,“not yet”. I stay onand four years laterwith the sons of ‘94I cross the borderfrom blue to green.my heart is too weakfor a gun so they give mea desk and time instead.this is not yet my country,but for two years,I am its.

iii. china’14, in camp. I read the news;our prime minister saysthat in borneo, twenty thousand chinesefound democracy before america.a letter to the editor that daycomplains our nation is dying,from the foreign bodieslodged in its heartlandsthat look just like ours.

​my father speaks the chinesehis colleague brings to work.I learned mine in ten yearsfrom a history five thousand old;it creaks when I open the hinges.I cannot speak my mother tongue.this is not yet my country.I have forgotten the chinese for“help, I’m lost”.here I cannot find my waymuch less myself.

Bobby Sun is a Chinese-Malaysian writer and spoken word poet who grew up in Singapore and is studying in London. His work has previously been published in the inaugural Singapore Poetry Writing Month (“SingPoWriMo”) anthology (as Robert Bivouac) and Rosarium Publishing’s anthology of Southeast Asian steampunk, “The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia” (as Robert Liow).